Behemoth; AI drummer (or, how do you people get anything done?)

Need some fresh sounds? Want to show off your sound design skills? Here's the place!
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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

15 Apr 2018

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JhWPOa ... sp=sharing

^^^-here's the combi-^^^
vvv-and the video-vvv



:)

first, a bit of background... been using Reason for years, but have never really done much in terms of messing around with combinators and the like, though I have seen how immensely powerful they can be. okay, that's it for background, actually, I guess.

I am lazy AF when it comes to programming drums. I'm a rock guy, who can't play drums for s@#$ (not having a kit doesn't help), so I usually want my drums to sound as realistic as I can get them. enter Addictive Drums... a great multisampled kit plugin gets me like 80% of the way there, which is great, but I need to actually program them, and, well, I'm not a great keyboard player either, so it's usually just me sitting there, hitting the kick for a few bars, then the snare, then the hat, and so on. otherwise, it's done using a grid, which doesn't sound very realistic, timing wise.

I wanted a better way. so, being the lazy bastard I am, I decided it would be a good use of my time to spend 30 hours and >$100 in Rack Extensions I otherwise wouldn't need to try and make one myself. surprisingly, I think I've gotten it to work (mostly).

here's what I wanted it to do:
  • set percentage of each hit in the sequence [partial; I got it to set percentage to hit for the individual kitpieces, but not percentage for each individual note within the sequence]
  • specify that certain hits within the sequence are required/hit 100% of the time [partial; I was able to get this probably 99% of the time, but when I add more randomness to the timing, there are occasional, but rare dropouts]
  • slider to allow me to set the tightness/randomness of the timing [successful]
  • slider to allow me to shift notes before or after the beat/kick [sort of successful; I was able to get the kick shifted before/after the other kitpieces, not the other way around]
  • slider to allow me to set randomness of velocity [successful]
  • ability to limit the number of concurrent drum strikes to four (2 stick; 2 foot) [unsuccessful :(]
  • ability to set priority for which of the four concurrent strikes possible would be allowed through (e.g. if kick, snare, hat pedal, and toms have priority over cymbals, any cymbal hits produced would be ignored) [nope.]
all that, I wanted to do for 16 different kit pieces. it took what feels like forever, and eats up an entire DSP bar on its own, but so far it does most of what I want it to. oh yeah, and according to my Combinator, I was able to do it using only 95 devices. :shock: it's unsurprisingly ugly, and a bit unwieldy, but it works.

my point here is...this was a blast. I haven't done anything musical in days because of it, but it was fun, and should reap some rewards down the line. I can't imagine trying to develop this sort of thing with any regularity, and also expecting to actually make any music.

kudos to those of you who've figured that out. I have a newfound appreciation for the Refill developers of the world.

here's a thumbnail shot of the Combinator...
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Last edited by guitfnky on 25 Apr 2018, edited 2 times in total.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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jayhosking
Posts: 613
Joined: 28 Nov 2016
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16 Apr 2018

This is a pretty crazy undertaking, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into it. I'd love to see it in action, whether it be a video or getting ahold of the combinator or whatever. I kind of love these wild projects that have been popping up on the forum over the last couple of months.

That said, uh, Addictive Drums 2 has a ton of great beats to start with and modify. Often I'll want to make my own beat, but I just snag the high hat performance from another track as a starting point. For me, it's usually the cymbals and the fills that don't quite work for me when it comes to machine drums. Since I got AD2 I don't think I've programmed a single beat from scratch.

Again, I'd love to see/hear this thing in action if you get a moment!

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

16 Apr 2018

jayhosking wrote:
16 Apr 2018
This is a pretty crazy undertaking, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into it. I'd love to see it in action, whether it be a video or getting ahold of the combinator or whatever. I kind of love these wild projects that have been popping up on the forum over the last couple of months.

That said, uh, Addictive Drums 2 has a ton of great beats to start with and modify. Often I'll want to make my own beat, but I just snag the high hat performance from another track as a starting point. For me, it's usually the cymbals and the fills that don't quite work for me when it comes to machine drums. Since I got AD2 I don't think I've programmed a single beat from scratch.

Again, I'd love to see/hear this thing in action if you get a moment!
thanks! I'm hoping to do a video of some sort once it's fully completed. in the meantime, here are a couple of screenshots showing the basic idea:
combi1.png
combi1.png (584.09 KiB) Viewed 2171 times
combi2 main.png
combi2 main.png (974.08 KiB) Viewed 2171 times
combi2 kit pieces.png
combi2 kit pieces.png (924.13 KiB) Viewed 2171 times
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

seqoi
Posts: 417
Joined: 12 Aug 2017

16 Apr 2018

omg this is truly behemoth combi programming...can't wait to hear video

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

16 Apr 2018

seqoi wrote:
16 Apr 2018
omg this is truly behemoth combi programming...can't wait to hear video
:thumbs_up:

here's hoping it won't take me too long to finish. I still need to figure out if I can limit the number of concurrent strikes (that's huge on my wish list for this thing). fingers crossed... :)
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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guitfnky
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Joined: 19 Jan 2015

21 Apr 2018

well, I couldn't get the simultaneous hits thing sorted, unfortunately. I probably could have, but not without an insane amount of routing (and this thing already has that). otherwise, it's come together pretty nicely. there were a few headaches along the way, and not a few times where I thought I was losing my mind, but it seems to work fairly well.

I ended up replacing all the Euclids with two Propulsion devices, and it's a lot more usable now, although I did have to make a minor sacrifice to the ability to slide the timing of things ahead of/behind the kick. I had to move the kick instead of all the other kitpieces when using the Propulsions. other than that and the concurrent hit mystery, it works.

I need to do a bit of cleanup, but I'm hoping to do a video of it in the next few days, once it's in a more presentable format.

:)
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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sublunar
Posts: 506
Joined: 27 Apr 2017

24 Apr 2018

I have no idea what's going on here.

I've always just programmed myself or used EZDrummer. Using EZ drummer is faster, easier and more realistic. But I hate EZD because of the baked in effects and whatnot so I'll be going SD3 probably before long. I'd rather go with a different company but I'm not sure there's anything better than SD3 out there right now.

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

24 Apr 2018

sublunar wrote:
24 Apr 2018
I have no idea what's going on here.

I've always just programmed myself or used EZDrummer. Using EZ drummer is faster, easier and more realistic. But I hate EZD because of the baked in effects and whatnot so I'll be going SD3 probably before long. I'd rather go with a different company but I'm not sure there's anything better than SD3 out there right now.
EZ Drummer is like Addictive Drums, in that it has multisampled kit pieces that make getting realistic sounding drum hits easier. what I'm doing has more to do with timing and velocity of the strikes than the way they sound. I don't like using pre-recorded MIDI sequences, and I don't play drums (at all) or keyboard (well). this lets me program a drum pattern, play it/tweak it with some controllable degree of randomness so that it feels more like a human performance than a perfectly quantized programmed pattern.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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O1B
Posts: 2037
Joined: 26 Jan 2015

24 Apr 2018

Good Lord, Man...! You even brought out RANDROME.

But, I'm with you. Drums matter. And i hate 16 step quantized Drums - or ones that Sound Q-tized.
I just got a second DrumKat. (bang on it every day).
4 drum pads midi out into Reason. Sounds good, too. Gotta learn sometime.

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

24 Apr 2018

O1B wrote:
24 Apr 2018
Good Lord, Man...! You even brought out RANDROME.

But, I'm with you. Drums matter. And i hate 16 step quantized Drums - or ones that Sound Q-tized.
I just got a second DrumKat. (bang on it every day).
4 drum pads midi out into Reason. Sounds good, too. Gotta learn sometime.
haha, yes, I'm really loving Randrome for this. never would have thought I'd buy that one, until I started on this.

it's been a fun project, and it actually doesn't use up quite as much DSP as I thought (rack space, though, is another issue entirely :lol: ). I spent this evening cleaning it up and setting up another version to play a Kong instead of a VST. I figured I should put a drum module that's more rigid sounding through its paces to see how it really holds up, and I think it sounds pretty damned good. of course, there's possibly quite a lot of bias in that opinion. ;)

hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow to put together a video on how it works, for anyone who's interested. if I can't get to it tomorrow, it might not be until the weekend. I can share the combi too, if anyone else might find it useful, with the caveat that there are 3 or 4 paid REs involved.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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O1B
Posts: 2037
Joined: 26 Jan 2015

24 Apr 2018

I'm Interested! Im sure I have all those REs, too.
guitfnky wrote:
24 Apr 2018
O1B wrote:
24 Apr 2018
Good Lord, Man...! You even brought out RANDROME.

But, I'm with you. Drums matter. And i hate 16 step quantized Drums - or ones that Sound Q-tized.
I just got a second DrumKat. (bang on it every day).
4 drum pads midi out into Reason. Sounds good, too. Gotta learn sometime.
haha, yes, I'm really loving Randrome for this. never would have thought I'd buy that one, until I started on this.

it's been a fun project, and it actually doesn't use up quite as much DSP as I thought (rack space, though, is another issue entirely :lol: ). I spent this evening cleaning it up and setting up another version to play a Kong instead of a VST. I figured I should put a drum module that's more rigid sounding through its paces to see how it really holds up, and I think it sounds pretty damned good. of course, there's possibly quite a lot of bias in that opinion. ;)

hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow to put together a video on how it works, for anyone who's interested. if I can't get to it tomorrow, it might not be until the weekend. I can share the combi too, if anyone else might find it useful, with the caveat that there are 3 or 4 paid REs involved.

User avatar
sublunar
Posts: 506
Joined: 27 Apr 2017

25 Apr 2018

guitfnky wrote:
24 Apr 2018
this lets me program a drum pattern, play it/tweak it with some controllable degree of randomness so that it feels more like a human performance than a perfectly quantized programmed pattern.
I respect what you're doing and I also don't like perfectly quantized drums. My go to solution for stiff midi drums is the f8 key in reason. I do play drums IRL but not very well, just well enough to understand the way they work.

I actually built what I call the Drum Combinator of Death in Reason using the old samples from the original Drum Kit From Hell and varying the hits in the NNXT and I was actually really happy with all the countless hours of work I put into it. But then I got EZDrummer and well I haven't used the Kit of Death since. I still program a lot of the drums myself and I never use an auto-generated midi file as-is out of personal feeling of needing to author everything myself. But using EZD, while still programming lots myself and generous applications of the f8 key, I have found that I am quite content with my drums these days.

User avatar
guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

25 Apr 2018

sublunar wrote:
25 Apr 2018
I respect what you're doing and I also don't like perfectly quantized drums. My go to solution for stiff midi drums is the f8 key in reason. I do play drums IRL but not very well, just well enough to understand the way they work.

I actually built what I call the Drum Combinator of Death in Reason using the old samples from the original Drum Kit From Hell and varying the hits in the NNXT and I was actually really happy with all the countless hours of work I put into it. But then I got EZDrummer and well I haven't used the Kit of Death since. I still program a lot of the drums myself and I never use an auto-generated midi file as-is out of personal feeling of needing to author everything myself. But using EZD, while still programming lots myself and generous applications of the f8 key, I have found that I am quite content with my drums these days.
that's awesome; I bet your Kit of Death was a really rewarding effort, even if you don't need to use it these days.

I'm with you on the feel that I need to create everything myself (some weird compulsion, for me, I think). I've used the stuff in F8 too, and it works really well. I particularly like the Alter Notes feature for keeping stuff like tom fills sounding fresh from section to section. having the option to choose which tool to use is pretty important to me, and I like the idea of being able to hear what I'm going to end up with on the fly, whenever possible.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

25 Apr 2018

okay, it's up. link to the combi and video are in the original post. :D sorry the video is so long. it should give you a pretty good idea what you can do with it, though it doesn't cover everything...

a couple of extra things to keep in mind:
  • you can copy and paste patches between Propulsions, but you shouldn't reset the devices to clear them; it'll also reset the velocity and timing randomness scaling on the backs of the devices, making them way more...volatile. :lol:
  • I know the 'beat' I created as an example is garbage; I was so focused on trying to explain stuff I didn't even bother to try to get a musical result. #whoopsie
  • the velocity randomness is built in, but you can also edit the velocity of each hit in the patterns on the lower Propulsion; this is very useful for ensuring a realistic sounding result.
  • if you're using a different device instead of a Kong, you'll just need to make sure you're setting the output notes on the TM-1 Trigger Multiplexer to match the note you want the combi to play. it's pretty easy to do, since the TM-1 automatically triggers the current note when you click on the note output selection, and when you're dragging up and down to set it.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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